How to Make a Fire Steel That Glows in the Dark

In this Instructable I'll show you how I made a fire steel or ferro rod handle using knife scale off-cuts. The final piece was beautiful and functional and I wanted to show that making your own survival gear can be fun!

For this project I used an interesting material called Kirinite which is a decorative and durable acrylic. It is easy to work with and polishes up beautifully. I used two sheets: one which was a pearlescent black and one 3mm wide fluorescent blue.

If you'd like to make this project you can find the materials here on Ebay in your country:

Kirinite on Ebay UK/EU: http://ebay.to/2eRFEGb

Kirinite Ebay USA: http://ebay.to/2eRFEGb

The Fire steel itself from a chinese manufacturer, but this could easily be replaced with a better quality product.

Fire Steels UK: http://ebay.to/2dIDM5x

Fire Steels USA: http://ebay.to/2dIDM5x

*I am a member of the Ebay partner network so if you click through and purchase any item on Ebay using my link I get a small reward. It does not effect the price of your item or cost you anything, it just helps me to buy coffee to make more videos!

Step 1: Measuring & Cutting

To begin I measured out and cut two pieces of the black and one piece of the blue glow Kirinite. Each piece was roughly 45mm x 20mm.

Kirinite cuts similar to acrylic and needs to kept cool during machining or it sort of melts back together! I cut mine on the scroll saw at a low speed and this seems to have done the trick.

These pieces came in a pack of off-cuts so it was great to give life to scrap material that would not have been used otherwise!

Step 2: Gluing the Blank Together

With my pieces cut it was time to glue them together. I keyed each surface that was due to be bonded with 60 grit sand paper and craft knife. A thick viscosity super glue did a great job at bonding the pieces together.

Step 3: Drilling a Hole for the Fire Steel

I cleaned up my Kirinite sandwich on a sanding disk until I had a nice blank to work with.

After marking up I went over to the drill press. Stupidly I managed to completely miss my mark and ended up with an off center hole!

To fix this I went back to the sander and evened out the one side so that the glowing layer was offset to one side. In the end I think that this looked cooler anyway so it turned out to be a happy mistake!

Step 4: Making a Hole for a Paracord

Next I cut down a section of brass tube, drilled a hole through my handle and glued the tube in. This hole would allow the fire steel to hang from a paracord.

Step 5: Polishing the Kirinite Handle

With all of my shaping was done it was time to polish. Kirinite polishes pretty easily but this was the longest part of the process.

I wet sanded the piece through increasingly finer grits of sand paper, working through to a 12,000 grit micro mesh, making sure that the surface was smooth, even and scratch free.

I finished up with a spot of my favourite car polish and rubbed the piece until it squeeked! If it's squeeky the chances are it will shine like a mirror!

Step 6: Assembling the Fire Steel

Finally I glued in the fire steel with my thick super glue and tied a paracord through the hole with a decorative bead (that I also made with Kirinite).

All in all I'm happy with my fire steel, and although I made a mistake with the drilling I think it looks cool.